The Sense of Direction.

Here I sit now, back on the Rio Guadiana and comfortably ensconced in the Anna M, but painfully aware of the tragedy at the Blackrock, Co Mayo, where a rescue helicopter has crashed. My thoughts and prayers are with those who lost their lives, and with their families. What a terrible and sudden thing it was!

Algarve cistus.

Having seen at close hand the value of those rescue helicopters and also the difficulties under which they operate, I can imagine what happened only too well.  I know that great big lump of rock and what it might do to a helicopter on a dark night, for all the modern technology. I will say what you are unlikely to read in the papers; they appear to have flown into it.*

I will also say something you will certainly never read in the papers, let alone hear on RTE, but which I nonetheless feel should be said, and I know that many people will be thinking to themselves. One would indeed rather not say it so close to the tragedy, but if it is not said now, when will it be said, and do we not owe the dead the homage of learning from them? I say it as a close observer of men and women, of their particular strengths and weaknesses, the dynamics between them and their potential effects, and also with knowledge of tense, critical situations; a mother has no business piloting a rescue helicopter, and it’s doubtful if any woman has. I'm afraid that the privilege of giving birth does involve some drawbacks, but there’s a fat chance of that being recognised as a fact of physiology these days! Meanwhile, let us hope that those brave flyers now see a brighter path.

*An apology to the Press: they have now eventually recognised it!

Achill Hd, taken from Anna M in 2015.

Now that that’s said, I may as well be hanged for cow as a calf, and say that this Mrs May looks like crashing the UK because she is not really looking where she is going. She is too busy trying to look good in the wonky mirror of her support. One might call it prioritising reactive awareness over clear strategic thinking, in other words of looking where one is going! It’s not that we don’t all need both of them, but women do tend to excel in the one and men in the other, and whether we can see our way or not, a sound sense of direction is essential! I recall the story of a friend who was sailing the Anna M towards some rocks in Roaringwater Bay; I said, 'we must tack!', and he said, 'but she's sailing so beautifully!'.

Equally the Duckie does not illustrate what I mean by a sound sense of direction, nor what I might even dare to call manliness;  in fact he seems worse than Mrs May in being too busy reacting, without thinking out where he is going; which is not to say there is no direction to him. After all cramming an administration with generals, bankers and fossil fuellers, and setting about demolishing just about everything except walls and weapons, is a pretty strong statement of intent! You might call it a desperate attempt to assert direction where it's lost, and indeed perhaps the best hope of recovering it is a good dose of feminine receptivity!

It is all frankly mad, and confusing. ‘Let’s get rid of everything that gets in the way of making money’ seems to be the bottom line of Tories and Trumpites alike. The EU for all its shortcomings does point a different way; less Punch and Judy politics, rather more real effort to build solidarity, openness and consensus, and to take our big problems in hand at whatever level may be appropriate, rather than refusing to see them.

I visited the country of my birth on my way here from Ireland. I was relieved to find plenty of people there who are thinking more or less like me; sometimes from a distance it can seem as if the place has drifted off into some parallel universe. I’ll give the example of a neighbour of our Mary Emma in Lancashire, a sound farmer’s daughter who works as a rep for an agricultural finance company. She finds herself as baffled as myself by the fact that 80% of English farmers voted for Brexit, in spite of the fact that most of their actual disposable income comes from the EU. “I know, I see their books!” she said.

They seem to think that the British Government will make it up. Really, a Tory government, in straightened circumstances, with a declining income, a depreciating currency, health, social services and education going to pot, while according to Reuters busily ‘embarking on a 178 billion pounds equipment-buying programme for the Ministry of Defence’....?

As for the effects of tariffs and so on, it is impossible for anyone but an expert to begin to get their heads round the possible commutations of whatever might be agreed with the EU, but the general drift seems likely to involve higher tariffs on imports from and exports to Europe, lower tariffs (eventually perhaps) on imports from the USA, New Zealand etc, while trade with Europe will involve additional transaction costs (in the region of 5%, according to a report I read for the National Farmers’ Union). In the main, neither farmers nor consumers are going to benefit; more tasteless mass-produced food in the supermarkets, produced in big agri-factories, is what can be expected.

However, I have had enough of banging on about Brexit; there comes a point where you have to let it all go. What I want to embark on is a bit of an autobiographical account, to show among other things why I am passionately committed to the European project, for all its faults. I will be drawing heavily on a little book that I have already written, which I called Living on the Fractal Frontier….. I shall try to post extracts of it on a weekly basis for the next while.

Preface.

“What were those two up to?” is a question that has no doubt occurred to all our nine children one time or another, not to mention quite a few other people and indeed to ourselves. Yet after all it was not so very unusual to ‘drop out’ of middle class life in the 1970s and attempt to live a more basic kind of life, ‘back to nature’ and all that. Quite a lot of literary mileage has been made of such attempts, not alone in modern times. However, if the fact that Fiona and I reared nine children on the basis of coastal fishing and subsistence in the west of Ireland were to be worth a book in itself, it would probably be better coming from herself.

My concern here is rather to spell out the intellectual, emotional and spiritual circumstances that led us to make the rather drastic life-change that we did. It’s not either that I wish to vindicate that decision. No, but I do happen to think that in the wake of the ruin of so many of the castles that have been erected since, this is as good a time as any to take another look at those times, up to fifty years ago and more, at their hopes and fears, at their few successes and their many failures.

When I was reproached with ‘dropping out’, I was wont to reply that actually we were trying to ‘drop in’. While it is true that we were rebelling, against a synthetic culture that seemed to have lost touch with its spiritual roots and to be even then bent on self-destruction, more importantly we were trying to recover some sense of reality, to discover an authentic inner dynamic for our own lives. The air was thick with 'alienation', like a head of steam that had been building up in the minds of artists and intellectuals as the 20th century 'progressed', and finally boiled out into a wider culture. A great hunger for 'authenticity' was upon us.

On the face of things, we did not succeed very well, but at least we made an effort; it was actually a serious and ambitious project, and perhaps it is one that needs to be taken up again now more urgently than ever. We had a great deal more in mind than merely substituting pitch-pine and muesli for formica and corn flakes!....

The need to secure the spiritual foundations of civilisation does not go away, however much one might like it to. Knowledge of the future is for God alone, but even should our role be only a matter of keeping our heads held high, of 'staying awake' and of hanging on to the freedom to watch and pray, this remains something that has to be worked at, for as long as life endures. In this spirit I ask myself, if some at least of our grandchildren will be believers, whether they will be the bearers of a new phase of Christian civilisation, or a remnant struggling to survive in the hills, or (as seems to me quite probable) both of these at once?

But is there in fact any sane and realistic way to look ahead, and to commit our lives to what may be becoming?  Or is the very attempt perhaps an absurd over-reach, and should we be concentrating all our energy in the present moment, ‘leaving its direction to God’? The fact is that this famous present moment is a process, and hopefully one of becoming; it therefore necessarily involves direction, for which we must take some kind of responsibility.  It is by no means a merely passive affair, but commits us to some degree of action. The essence of our human dignity is that we are free and able to respond to Divine Love, in whatever way we may be called.

Gwen knows where she is going!

Our Real Friends in the World.

Sanlucar  de Guadiana.

Sailors by nature tend to be people who enjoy different peoples, places and languages. Being used to watching one country disappear over the horizon, and then another one appear, conditions us to realise that their cultural aspects are secondary to the fact of their rather improbable existence; each is but another stage for divers players, albeit with different scenery.

Meeting the inhabitants of those countries soon helps us to realise that their differences are relatively superficial; deep down human nature is much the same everywhere, even while being tugged and torn between good and evil tendencies as universal as fair weather and foul! Admittedly, the moral climate, like the physical one, differs from place to place, but they all have their own advantages and disadvantages. It is wonderful at once to discover the variety, the differing perspectives, and the underlying universal meanings. This kind of thing accounts for much of the pleasure I take in sailing along the Gannetsway. The places that are special to me, such as Sherkin and Guadianaland, are at once remarkably distinct and remarkably open.

It may seem easier to know where one stands with those who speak the same language, but here is a lot of code that saves us the trouble of actual perception. Once one does manage to cross the language barrier, one is perhaps more likely to arrive at a better understanding concerning real meaning. This process actually works as something of a lie detector too, because to communicate across languages involves precisely finding common ground in reality. One knows that one has to make an effort to understand the other person, and how they perceive us. Lies so often depend on euphemisms and short-cuts that lazily skate round awkward facts, and in our own culture it may be easier to deploy the many handy mechanisms which it furnishes to help us avoid them. Sea-faring is a school of truth because it does not favour that kind of laziness.

Like the sea, the truth is often inconvenient and far from comfortable; however its successful manipulation is the prime preoccupation of dodgy psychopaths in their quest for power. Yes indeed, Mr J.Edgar Hoover, as you said, ‘truth-telling is the key to responsible citizenship’, just as the judicious manipulation of certain truths was key to your long career in charge of the CIA! That would not seem like a problem to anyone who can convince himself that he is on the side of the angels, but what if one is in thrall to the Devil?

With men like that, anything can be justified in terms of their concept of the

'national interest' in whatever war they happen to be prosecuting. War they must have, since this is what gives them their values and identity, their standard of right and wrong and their program for action. All too often, it is also what makes them rich, while many thousands of lesser mortals die in the battlefields.

In the 20th century very many people evidently lost all sense of themselves as persons apart from the role their country found for them. My country right or wrong! remains a powerful cry today. A devastating sense of insecurity compels some to look in the mirror of their country, in order to see themselves writ large, but when the mirror seems to be in danger of breaking, they panick. Those who help them keep the mirror together are good, those who threaten it are bad; and so they may even come up with foolish remarks like ‘our real friends in the world speak English!’ (Mr Nigel Farage in Washington lately.)

Mr Farage has found a friend indeed, a President who actually embodies the current paroxysm of nationalist narcissism. Duckie could hardly give a clearer indication that his claim to represent a genuine new deal is bunkum than his recently stated intention of increasing 'defence' spending by $54billion. We may believe in a genuine new deal when a President announces a massive reduction in expenditure on arms and also in their export, or even begins to pay down the national debt. I will not be holding my breath; it seems likely that it is impossible for the USA to ween itself off such drugs.

"I'm the king of debt. I'm great with debt. Nobody knows debt better than me," said Duckie in an interview on CBS last June. "I've made a fortune by using debt, and if things don't work out I renegociate the debt...."
"How do you renegociate the debt?"
"You go back and you say, hey guess what, the economy crashed," Trump replied. "I'm going to give you back half."

Such is Mr Farage's 'real friend', who boasts about 'keeping his promises to the American people'! Unfortunately those dudes evidently live in a parallel universe to, say, that of the plain people of Ireland, who are still smarting from having to pay off debts that largely weren't even their own. I guess there are still a few Americans who believe debt is something that sooner or later, one way or another, has to be repaid, but Larry Kudlow in the National Review said, referring to Duckie's recent speech to Congress, "That is optimism. That is leadership. And that is greatness." A bit like our own Celtic Tiger eh? I can only see that as fawning and deluded nonsense, and I would hope that few of my countrymen have memories so short that they cannot see through it!

Such narcissism is less likely to hold up between those of different nations and languages. Our real friends are those who help us see the truth, a process that involves triangulating from points of reference beyond ourselves. That is why Europe today is a more promising entity than the USA, and also because Europe, and especially the Germans, remember too well how such trips as that end! Europe must take up the age-old task of trying to weave the rope of human society around that Core which is at once its true heart but also utterly Other, beyond all our stupid human illusions, and even beyond our somewhat feeble efforts to understand what's up in this strange world!

***

In this blog, I am going to give the commentary on what is currently happening a rest, while I concentrate on writing a book about how the sea and other aspects of life taught me to see things as I do, and also to love the idea of a United Europe. It may even be called The Making of a European. I would love to be able to make certain people understand that we Europeans are here to stay, and why! I will post extracts as I go along, together with brief notes and photos if I'm doing some sailing.

Spring morning from Anna M.

Oh for a Gannet's-eye View!

I love the sharpness of a gannet’s eyes, as they fly so gracefully over the waves. They don’t miss much, they are not deceived as they patrol with their wonderful air of detachment. They might or might not cast a disdainful eye down on my boateen as they soar past.

Winging their way past Cape St Vincent, for example, they of course know just when it is time to head east, but one will not detect the least glance at the land. The land! It is just and only that, whatever name we may choose to put on this or that chunk of it. Cast a cold eye on life, on death! - the poet Yeat’s epitaph seems to sum up their attitude as well.

It’s all very fine when you’re dead though! We all have our lives to lead. Would that we could suss out the truth of things that affect us with the gannet’s ease! There seems to be some sort of crescendo of confusion in the world, which pulls at our minds more and more. ‘Truth?’ said Dave here in Guadianaland; ‘I’ve given up on it!’ Indeed, if it’s peace of mind you want, this sometimes seems the only thing to do; it certainly is a proposition that appeals to most of us in times like these. There's a lot to be said for simply letting the horsemen pass by! Especially the ones like this Duckie!

In theory, I consider it an unacceptable and lazy cop out, but I realised with renewed force the other day that I am guilty of it myself. The occasion was a casual encounter with a fellow Irishman at Faro. Canice and I met him at the bus stop and we decided to take a taxi together to the station, then we had time for a coffee together. He had spent 30 years in the States and was a clued up, sane kind of a man. Somehow 9/11 came up and he professed his opinion that the official story was a white-wash. Now of course I’ve heard this before and even looked at some of the web-sites; but I’ve never actually bothered to screw myself up to seriously considering their truth. Well, says your man, take another look at them so!

How about this:-

Scientific Panel Investigating Nine-Eleven  Association Statement: "We have found solid scientific grounds on which to question the interpretation put upon the events of September 11, 2001 by the Office of the President of the United States of America and subsequently propagated by the major media of western nations."*

Or this:- Twenty-five U.S. Military Officers Challenge Official Account of 9/11 1/14/08:

• “September 11, 2001 seems destined to be the  watershed event of our lives and the greatest test for our democracy in our lifetimes.  The evidence of government complicity in the lead-up to the events, the failure to respond during the event, and the  astounding lack of any meaningful investigation afterwards, as well as the ignoring of evidence turned up by others that renders the official explanation impossible, may signal the end of the American experiment.  It has been used to justify all manners of measures to legalize repression at home and as a pretext for behaving as an aggressive empire abroad.  Until we demand an independent, honest, and thorough investigation and accountability for those whose action and inaction led to those events and the cover-up, our republic and our Constitution remain in the gravest danger.”**

Well ok, anyway havn't we all seen the video of the third building collapsing straight down on itself; and bought the story that it was just collateral damage? How could we have possibly done so? Then there is more, much more…. And then the next thing, President Kennedy’s assassination! Just a lone nutter?

I remember clearly the moment I heard about it, as a teenager waiting to buy some chocolate in the tuck shop at school. Well we’ve all heard long since how the CIA or some such seemed to be involved. Now take a look at the evidence that President Johnson himself was in it…. So that’s my active life gone by without facing what is at the very least a strong possibility. How would things have been different if this had come out at the time? Apparently there was a big story calling out LBJ on other bad stuff ready to roll on the Time/Life presses at the time, which was pulled when he suddenly became president.*** But why should we be surprised at it all, we who have read our Shakespeare and a bit of history? I suppose we just kidded ourselves that somehow things were different in our modern democratic age!

Which brings us to now, and Mr Tim Cook, the boss of Apple, calling in the Daily Telegraph:- ‘for governments to launch a public information campaign to fight the scourge of fake news, which is “killing people’s minds.”

‘In an impassioned plea, Mr Cook, boss of the world’s largest company, says that the epidemic of false reports “is a big problem in a lot of the world” and necessitates a crackdown by the authorities and technology firms.

‘He said that this crackdown would help providers of quality journalism and help drive out clickbait. “The outcome of that is that truthful, reliable, non-sensational, deep news outlets will win,” Mr Cook said.’       
-Daily Telegraph, 10/2/17.

Yea right! Mr Cook, you just don’t get it! I doubt if there is anything as sensational as unvarnished truth! (Why, a small outbreak of it is currently set to bring down the Irish Government. Thank God it can happen in our wee country!) A crackdown by the authorities and technology firms, in order that we may have truthful, reliable, non-sensational, deep news !!! I find this statement as alarming as any of the many alarming statements that have come out recently. I'm sure our Duckie would love it. If that is to come about, we have but a short window of opportunity to insist that the potential of the internet to facilitate freedom of thought is not stifled.

Meanwhile, we have the said Duckie confusing the issue even more, even as he calls the mainline news providers liars. No doubt there's truth in that, but is it the way he means it? It seems to be a case of the pot calling the kettle black, if ever there was one. Yet he is capable of coming up with the odd little flash of truth, as in the well-known exchange on Fox News:-

O’Reilly: “He’s a killer, though…Putin’s a killer.”

Trump: “We got a lot of killers. What, you think our country’s so innocent?”

There is indeed need to drain the swamp, but it is very hard to believe that this Duckie is the man to do it. Meanwhile the USA appears to be about to sink further into it. The present situation actually makes Europe look like a bastion of sanity. How very sad, for anyone like me who is fond of England, that they should choose such a moment to go taking the wrong way! Looking at things strategically, who in their right mind would want their country to turn in the American direction, rather than the European, at this particular moment in history? Can anyone possibly get it into those thick Tory heads that it might be wise to put off invoking that famous article 50 at least for another while? Could they not cite 'circumstances of exceptional peril' or something like that? After all, things have moved on since the famous referendum!

And what can we do? Pace our Luke, who was making snotty noises about 'cyber-warriors' the other day, I think it is useful to engage on the internet. The Russians certainly seem to think so, because even this little blog suddenly had a score of hits out of the blue from them, when I said something about their president. Very likely only mechanical hits, but it still goes to show the extent of their engagement!

Meanwhile, perhaps the best we can do is to get rid of censorship in our own minds, as we keep quietly and courageously striving to get a handle on what's happening in the world around us. At least we won't be bored, as we try to build up our little communities of truth and solidarity!

Here is some food for thought, courtesy of Fergal whom we met at Faro and who suggested a few good 'alternative' news sites:-

Meanwhile some of the Gannet's distant relatives are
preparing for Spring in VRSA!

http://patriotsquestion911.com/
http://www.tomdispatch.com
https://consortiumnews.com/
http://truthdig.com/
http://theintercept.com/
http://spartacus-educational.com/

*http://www.physics911.net/
**http://www.opednews.com   

***http://spartacus-educational.com/USAjohnsonLB.htm

Eh Duckie, Hang On!

Stormy weather in Horseshoe Bay.

The Donald...Duck...Dux...Il Duce...Duckie (pronounced with a long u, the way I used to be addressed as a young lad on the buses in Nottingham!):- Fiona and I are still trying to decide what to call the new incumbent of the White House. After all it’s presidentially infradig to use the name blazoned on the baseball caps, carpet slippers and just about everything else in Trumpland! We seem to be settling for Duckie. 'America first, quack quack!'

He certainly is proving a Godsend to the newspapers that he purports to despise; never a dull moment so far! And he certainly has a knack of putting everyone on the spot! Here am I, a conservative liberal rebel just back from ‘metrosexual’ London, having I hope adequately spelled out my opposition to Brexit, nationalism, isolationism, chauvinism, narcissism etc, but who nonetheless has to admit that this Duckie fellow does have just a few points going for him that the liberals cannot get.

It’s undeniable that his cavalier attitude to facts and his vanity are appalling, and these are bound to result in incoherent and dangerous policies. However there he is with whatever it takes to throw political correctness to the winds, and with it some of what might be termed the foundational lies of the post-truth age. I refer to old chestnuts like calling the deliberate destruction of a human life a ‘right’, or a relationship of two persons of the same sex a ‘marriage’.

Likewise I realise better than most that the Brexiteers are challenging the European establishment to face up to many issues that they seem to have thought they could safely ignore. I have witnessed the systematic destruction of the hopes of Irish fishing communities, for instance, which occurred primarily on the watch of the Common Fisheries Policy, although the national government was not shaping to do any better before it. Looking through the American prism helps us to see that this is just one little piece in the failure of neo-liberal market capitalism, which has left too many people out of the technological wonderland that it promotes. The whole creaking system of bureaucracy meanwhile gobbles up public money more for its own survival, it sometimes seems, than for whatever good it may or may not do.

While I can sympathise with the Brexiteers and Trumpites thus far, I completely disagree that we will solve these problems by going back to nationalism, that has failed so catastrophically in the past. Anyway, I cannot get away from the suspicion that their so-called ideals are more of a cover for the shady corporate interests that tend to dominate the modern world than anything else, while the national governments tend to be more accessible to graft than the EU. I recall brown envelopes for politicians being even a help in securing fishing licences! Also, contrary to the impression generated in sections of the British press, it is obvious that there are all sorts of efficiencies to be gained by combining the work of 28 separate governments.

I may have spent my life trying to find an effective alternative to neo-liberal market capitalism, but I do not claim to have one. However, I have some firm convictions as to how to set about developing one, while I'm quite certain Trumpites and Brexiteers will not do so, with their dreadful divisive ‘cowboys and indians’ approach, their 'might is right' attitude and the everlasting glamorisation of wealth.

One good place to start along the path to a real alternative is with the recognition that we are all, I mean the entire human race, in this together, and the reckless pursuit of our own interests or supreme prioritising of our own security will be counter-productive. There is no real way forward but by listening to ‘the other’, in humility; by striving for consensus, being ‘slow to claim one’s rights’, endlessly patient. A reverence for truth and physical reality will go a long way to help as well, and steering clear of bogus notions like ‘the will of the people’.

Western democracy only became possible when mankind began to admit that the only will capable of uniting human beings in freedom and integrity is that of God.  While we Christians pray that this will of God be done on earth, we also know this to be a work in process beyond any secular set-up. But surely one does not need to be a Christian to realise that life is infinitely more grand, complex, interesting, mysterious and exciting than any human ideology or set-up can do justice to!  

Democracy allows people to have their own wills and respond in their own way, and when anyone who disagrees with the current dispensation are told that they are ‘traitors’, well then we should have learnt by now that we are being short-changed and on the road to tyranny. The institutions of democracy have indeed to do their best in the circumstances of the day, making messy compromises if necessary so that vital common action may be undertaken; but meanwhile Lady Truth herself is rather more likely to be found among the poor and in those whose minds are not distorted and clouded by the pursuit or enjoyment of power! Any real democracy must learn to hear their voices, though if the wheel turns and they do come to power, well she will probably swing around to the other side!

By the way, if such considerations as these don’t

Back to work.

convince you that nobody has any business trying to close down the Brexit debate on account of that referendum, nor Mr Kenneth Clarke's eloquent words in the House of Commons, how about this:-

http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/brexit/2016/10/24/brexit-is-not-the-will-of-the-british-people-it-never-has-been/ ?

Thank God we decided to rear our family here in Ireland, but it’s a pity that Irish opinion has not been taken into account although we are bound to be profoundly affected by the outcome. I can only hope we will find the strength to contribute to a European Union that will hopefully become much more proactive and dynamic without the constraints imposed by the everlasting imperial nostalgia of too many of our neighbours on the bigger island.

As for the Brexiteers palling up with Duckie, all I can say is Good Luck, and I sincerely hope they will be able to put some manners on him! But unless most of what we have been taught about economics for the last fifty years is rubbish, he will provoke an economic disaster. Then it will be time to find someone to blame, and I’m not sure the Arabs or even the Chinese will altogether do for that. One has to remember that these dudes in Washington got their education from Hollywood. It is extremely disquieting and ominous that they are already lining up a dodgy narrative about Germany.* But I even heard a perfectly intelligent person in England, who voted for Brexit, blaming Germany for it. Oh...My...God!

*https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/jan/31/trump-trade-adviser-germany-euro-us-eu-peter-navarro

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-01-31/euro-surges-after-trump-trade-advisor-accuses-germany-using-grossly-undervalued-currency

As Clear As Mud!

'prepared to accept hard Brexit'

So now it’s official; Mrs May wants to have her cake and eat it! One wonders what she would say if Mr May announced he was leaving her, but wanted to go on living in the family home?

What is one to make of someone saying, on one side of her mouth, “we want to trade with you as freely as possible, and work with one another to make sure we are all safer, more secure and more prosperous through continued friendship,” while on the other, “We do not seek to hold on to bits of membership as we leave”?

What does she think the nations of Europe have been doing for the last half century, if not trying to achieve the former? But now everything has to stop, huge amounts of money and effort have to be wasted, so that we can all set about reinventing the wheel, all to suit the likes of Mr Nigel Farage, UKIP, the DUP etc! And on this basis she proposes to unite Her Majesty’s fractured kingdom?

Such two-faced hypocrisy will be called out by events. It is already happening in Northern Ireland, where the tension between those who feel empowered by the nationalistic and imperialistic undertones of Brexit (such as the present DUP leadership), and those who react against them, are inflaming all the pre-existing tensions that have bedeviled the recently collapsed power-sharing executive. It is the context of the EU that made it possible at all, and it is hard to see how it can be put together again  in the present circumstances.

The main hope there must be that a sufficient number of DUP members will take a lead from their Scottish cousins, while these will forge ahead with their project for a Scotland independent of Brexitland. Roll out the Celtic Alliance on the Gannetsway!

Meanwhile the institutions of Europe will have to get a whole more 'subsidiarized' and responsive, but also a lot tougher in some respects. They might start by firing Mr Farage out of the European Parliament; I for one really object to their continuing to pay his salary, while he has the nerve to lecture the likes of me about ‘treachery’!

Of course Mrs May is anticipating that things will get nasty; we all know how divorces tend to start with good intentions for a 'civilized' relationship, before they become really bitter. She is busy painting herself in the colours of sweetness and light now so that she can blame the Europeans when they do so.

Consider the ridiculous narrative that Mr Philip Hammond was trying to spin in Germany lately. According to the Guardian, 'In an interview with the German newspaper Welt am Sonntag, Hammond commented that if Britain was left closed off from European markets after leaving the EU, it would consider leaving behind a European-style social model, with “European-style taxation systems, European-style regulation systems” and “become something different”.

Asked to clarify his remark, the chancellor told his German interviewers: “We could be forced to change our economic model and we will have to change our model to regain competitiveness. And you can be sure we will do whatever we have to do. The British people are not going to lie down and say, too bad, we’ve been wounded. We will change our model, and we will come back, and we will be competitively engaged.”'

‘If Britain was left closed off ‘...’forced’...’we’ve been wounded’... what sort of language is this? Who is doing the leaving? Who is it that wants nothing further to do with the European Union? Is this arrogance or mere confusion? But as for the bright future they purport to be lining up for the British people, it just does not stack up. It is already the case that this ‘great trading nation’ needs to do something drastic to ‘regain competitiveness’; in fact the use of the word ‘regain’ is entirely inappropriate in this context. Here is a graph from the British Government of their balance of payments….

Something drastic needs to be done; the status quo is not sustainable. What is to be done? Well, for a start, the currency has to be devalued, but how does one get away with deliberately doing that? Blame the Europeans and invoke the Dunkirk spirit of course! Then one can set about berating a fractious populace with the need for ‘national unity’ and ‘discipline’ as inflation takes hold, prices and interest rates go up, and they get screwed into the ground!

The whole outbreak of right-wing populism is a neurotic response to national decline, like the bombastic mullarkies of the new President in Washington. Mr Hammond's proposed race to the bottom in corporate tax rates is the exact opposite of what needs to happen, and this is just one reason why international solidarity is a condition for making our societies more just....

When I started the blog I never imagined it would become so political. Someone suggested the other day that I should find a new name for it. Well, that’s a nuisance, and anyway my favourite images derive from sea-faring and fishing. Oh yes, I'll be getting back to the Common Fisheries Policy, its iniquitous failings and how they should be addressed. But for now, let's remember that to return to a regime of 'might is right' and 'the survival of the fittest', such as this new wave of nationalists imply, is not going to help!

Still travelling, by Paddington...

and the Galtee mountains in sunny Ireland!

Photos by Fiona.

Wanted - Slaves!

Sark from Herm.

Now I am on the train from Portsmouth to London, having arrived there from Guernsey on the overnight ferry. The weather has been very pleasant, especially so for the day we went to Herm on a RIB. From there we had a grand view across the Great Russell to Sark, France and Jersey, noting the odd fact that the strong tidal current was circulating anti-clockwise right around Herm at the time. (I am finishing this post overlooking the Thames at Battersea.)

With Cristiona in Battersea.

My friend who owned the RIB was very knowledgeable about Sark, so I was able to update myself on the intriguing saga** of how the  Barclay brothers, the so patriotic owners of the Daily Telegraph, have been trying to turn the island into a personal fiefdom cum tax haven, with direct access to London by turbo-charged helicopter (which do 200mph, so could reach London in about one hour). They built their own vast mansion on the even smaller neighbouring island of Brecqhou, then set about buying out or bullying the residents of Sark into submission, complete with involvement from the highly dodgy Abramovitch family. It seems however that their scheme has rather foundered on their inability to establish a viable customs set-up, so they could have direct access to London. It’s not good enough apparently to have to go via Guernsey. Such a yarn has the makings of a good novel, but being true we shall have to wait a while yet to see how it will end!

The off-shore finance industry in Guernsey seems to have been winding down, with some of the prominent banks pulling out altogether. The grossly inflated property market has stagnated, with very little being sold on the open market. I heard of one poor man who had to sell his house for 8million quid, though he had valued it at 14million. I also met a lady whose husband has absconded to Mexico.

There seems to be a backbone of resourceful islanders who are finding ways of taking up the slack, though they face a very serious problem in the shortage of labour. Madeirans and Latvians have particularly big contingents in the service industries, whose jobs the locals tend to disdain even when they themselves are not highly stoked with education and the internet. However ‘the States’, which is the local term for the Guernsey Government, have been making life more and more difficult for immigrant workers, besides which accommodation is indeed very scarce. In theory EU citizens are entitled to go there, but they have to get permission to occupy property on the local (affordable) market, which may well be limited to a period of 9 months.*

It puts one in mind of the state to which Britain is heading and the USA has maybe already arrived, with a huge underclass who have no security and precious few rights; probably to be chucked out pretty quickly before they acquire pension rights or access to the Health Service. No doubt that is the kind of society favoured by Mr Farage and his South African backer Mr Banks, for it is the clear implication of much of the substance of the Brexit movement, pace Mrs May’s ‘mission to make Britain a country that works for everyone’ etc.

I watch the Daily Telegraph’s propaganda on behalf of Brexit day by day with grim amusement. They may well be right that there are short-term economic advantages to Brexit, for all I know; and of course, in such an uncertain world, ‘short-termism’ is the order of the day. But those on both sides of the debate make the mistake of talking simply in economic terms. ‘Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto ye’ does not come into it. The question is, what kind of a society do we really want? Something along the lines the Barclay brothers might favour perhaps?

One thing is for sure, unless Britain succeeds in stopping the world and getting off, immigrants will be needed. I consider it a privilege to have people into one’s country to work, willing to come and give the best years of their lives, with all the cost of rearing and educating them expended by their native country - a particular advantage frankly when they are fellow Europeans.

Also, this country will be hugely dependent on all kinds of imports, and if a society is to be in any way holistic and just, trade will simply be the economic dimension of a much broader and deeper cultural interchange. To imagine that it can truly thrive on some mythical ‘global’ relationships, without firstly getting on with the neighbours, makes no sense.

Esme on an old German gun.

By all means, let’s go on for the global cooperation; if only as much effort was being put into addressing the big challenges out there as is being put into Brexit! But trying to steal a march on our neighbours, hoping to take advantage of certain dubious historical advantages, is not the way to do it; a much better approach involves burying the British Empire for good.

How do you react to that statement? I expect that your answer will tell which side of the Brexit debate you are on; there’s no call to go on arguing about dodgy economic projections!

*a friend of mine on Guernsey writes on this: 'the average service worker is not allowed to live in the local market unless they get a license; these are only granted to finance, medical, education and other deemed essential jobs. Retail or service industry jobs do not qualify as a general rule. Most foreign service workers have to find accommodation on the open market, usually a room (rent approx £1200 -£1400 per month) Housing dept has to approve where they live before a 'right to work' document is issued. Decent open market rooms at an affordable price are even more difficult to find since the complexity of the rules has changed, to the extent that some of the staff in Housing misinterpret them. It depends who you see on the day!'

**see http://gannetswaysailing.blogspot.co.uk/2015_12_01_archive.html)

Leaving St Peter Port.